Abriea "Abbie" Mitchell Cook, also billed as Abbey Mitchell, was an American soprano opera singer. She performed the role of Clara in the premiere production of George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess in 1935, and was also the first to record "Summertime" from that musical.
William Mercer Cook, better known as Will Marion Cook, was an American composer, violinist, and choral director. Cook was a student of Antonín Dvořák. In 1919 he took his New York Syncopated Orchestra to England for a command performance for King George V of the United Kingdom, and tour. Cook is probably best known for his popular songs and landmark Broadway musicals, featuring African-American creators, producers, and casts, such as Clorindy, or The Origin of the Cake Walk (1898) and In Dahomey (1903). The latter toured for four years, including in the United Kingdom and United States.
James Arthur Briggs was a British Caribbean jazz trumpeter and orchestra leader who performed in Europe.
Stafford James is an American double-bassist and composer.
Charles Anthony Elgar was an American violinist, musician, teacher and jazz bandleader.
Ludwig Elias "Lud" Gluskin was an American jazz drummer and bandleader.
Howard Osmond McFarlane was an English jazz trumpeter.
Alex Hyde was an American jazz bandleader and violinist.
Chaim "Efim" Schachmeister was a German violinist and bandleader. He also recorded under the pseudonyms Sascha Elmo and Joan Florescu.
Pete George Hampton was an American vocalist, harmonicist, banjo player, and vaudevillian from Bowling Green, Kentucky. He was part of various Vaudeville groups of which the most important was his own Darktown Entertainers. In 1903 he starred in the landmark Broadway musical In Dahomey, a work which he had toured in previously the year prior. He made more than 150 recordings during his career in the United Kingdom and Germany between 1903 and 1911. In 1904, he made the first harmonica recording by an African American, regarded as a pioneering example in the development of the blues harmonica style.
The Années folles was the decade of the 1920s in France. It was coined to describe the social, artistic, and cultural collaborations of the period. The same period is also referred to as the Roaring Twenties or the Jazz Age in the United States. In Germany, it is sometimes referred to as the Golden Twenties because of the economic boom that followed World War I.
Julius Ansco Bruinier was a German musician in the Berlin Jazz / Dance music band, known as the Weintraub's Syncopators. During the 1920s he played the trumpet in the band, but the only instrument in which he had received formal training was the 'cello, and on occasion he played fluently any one of a range of other instruments. He was an engineer by profession.
Myrtle Watkins was an American-born Mexican dancer, jazz and Latin American music singer, and actress, who came to be known in the United States and Mexico as Paquita Zarate.
Ruth Virginia Bayton was an American-born entertainer and actress known in France, Germany, Spain, and Argentina.
Mike Danzi was an American jazz and light music banjoist, guitarist, and bandleader. He has been cited as one of several musicians who successfully transplanted American popular musical genres to Germany during the 1920s and authored a valuable eyewitness account of the evolution of popular music in Germany prior to World War II.
Arabella Fields was an African-American singer. She moved to Europe in 1894 and is thought to be among the first black-American artists to record in Europe, making recordings of songs by Stephen Foster. She spoke five languages and was successful with European audiences singing lieder and yodeling.
The Chocolate Kiddies is a three-act Broadway-styled revue that, in its inaugural production – from May to September 1925 – toured Berlin, Hamburg, Stockholm, and Copenhagen. The show never actually performed on Broadway, but was conceived, assembled, and rehearsed there. Chocolate Kiddies commissioned new works, but was also an amalgamation and adaptation of several leading African American acts in New York, specifically Harlem, intended to showcase exemplary jazz and African American artistry of the Harlem Renaissance. Early jazz was uniquely American; and, while New Orleans enjoys popularity for being its birthplace, the jazz emerging from Harlem during the Renaissance had, on its own merits, captured international intrigue.
Stefan Weintraub, nicknamed "Steps", was a German jazz musician, bandleader of the Weintraubs Syncopators and Australian mechanic.
The Adventures of Villar was a Greek silent film comedy created in 1927 by Hungarian-Greek cinematographer and film director Joseph Hepp. It was one of two films starring the iconic Charlie Chaplin-like character named Villar (Βιλλαρ) created by Nikolaos Sfakianos. The first film was entitled Villar at the Women's Baths in Faliro. The film inspired countless Greek films. The Apaches of Athens (1930) was also shot in a taxi. Kimon Spathopoulos portrayed a Greek Charlie Chaplin-like character in the Turkish comedy Sarlo Istanbul'da in 1954.
Evelyn Anderson (1907–1994) was an American dancer. She appeared in productions by Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle and on Broadway in the revue Blackbirds of 1928. She was 18 years old when she was selected for an all-Black vaudeville troupe due to perform in Paris. La Revue Negre was headlined by Josephine Baker and toured both Germany and Belgium. After La Revue Negre broke up, Anderson stayed in Europe for 15 years. She performed alongside Florence Mills and Hattie King Reavis.
